45. Climate Memo Mondays,
October 18, 2021
Build Back Better Act: Biden's $3.5T
plan to help working families
By
Sen. Bernie Sanders Wed, Oct 13, 2021
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Oct 14, 2021, 6:27 PM
(17 hours ago) |
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Dick -
It's great to communicate
with people who agree with us. It's even more important to make the case to
people who don't agree with us. Enclosed is an op-ed I just wrote for Fox News
discussing the big-money interests that
want to defeat the Reconciliation Bill which, in my view, has the chance to be
the most consequential piece of legislation for working families in the modern
history of our country.
The two great questions
that we face right now are whether all Democrats will stand together to protect
the interests of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor, and whether
all Democrats will stand together to take on the greed of a handful of special
interest groups and wealthy campaign contributors that dominate our political
system. This is a fight we cannot lose.
Biden's $3.5T plan to help working families
depends on Democratic unity
It is no great surprise that not a single
Republican in Congress supports this bill
By
Sen. Bernie Sanders
Wed, Oct 13, 2021
At a time when working
families continue to struggle, poll after poll shows that the vast majority of
the American people support the provisions in President Joe Biden's $3.5
trillion Build Back Better Act.
Some 88 percent believe
we should lower the cost of prescription drugs, 84 percent believe we should
expand Medicare to include dental care, hearing aids and eyeglasses, 73 percent
support establishing Paid Family and Medical Leave, and 67 percent want
universal Pre-K. Further, 67 percent believe the federal government should
raise taxes on high-income people and corporations to help pay for these
desperately needed programs — which is what this legislation does.
So, given this
overwhelming support, why is it taking so long for Congress to pass this bill?
The answer is simple. Follow the money.
As part of our corrupt,
big-money dominated political system, the pharmaceutical industry is now
spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying, campaign contributions
and television ads to defeat this legislation because it does not want Medicare
to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices. In order to increase their
profits they want American taxpayers to continue paying, by far, the highest
prices in the world for our medicine — sometimes ten times more than the people
in other countries.
Last year alone, while
nearly one out of four Americans could not afford to fill the prescriptions
their doctors wrote, six of the largest pharmaceutical companies made nearly
$50 billion in profits and the ten highest paid executives in the industry made
more than $500 million in compensation. In order to preserve their corrupt and
greedy pricing system, the drug companies hired nearly 1,500 lobbyists,
including former leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, to protect
their interests. That is 3 lobbyists for every member of Congress.
Unbelievable!
But let’s be clear.
Opposition to this bill is not just limited to the pharmaceutical industry.
At a time when millions
of senior citizens and people with disabilities cannot afford the home health
care, dental care, hearing aids, and eyeglasses they desperately need, private
health insurance companies are strongly opposed to this legislation. They are
spending tens of millions of dollars to defeat this bill because they do not
want Congress to expand Medicare to provide dental, hearing, and vision
benefits and they apparently do not want seniors to receive the quality care
they need in their own homes.
And it’s not just the
health care industry and big drug companies. The fossil fuel industry is
launching a major advertising campaign to defeat this legislation because it
seems to be more concerned about protecting their short-term profits than
addressing the existential threat of climate change.
At a time of
record-breaking forest fires, drought, rising sea levels and extreme weather
disturbances the fossil fuel industry has, since 2000, spent more than $2
billion on lobbying to protect its special interests and prevent the federal
government from making cuts in carbon emissions to protect our planet.
Further, at a time of
massive wealth and income inequality — when the two richest people in this
country own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent — the billionaire class is
vigorously opposing this legislation because it wants to prevent Congress from
making the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations finally start
paying their fair share of taxes.
The corporate elite seem
to love the idea that billionaires have a lower effective tax rate than nurses
or teachers and that, in a given year, there are dozens of profitable
corporations that don’t pay a nickel in federal income tax.
Let’s be clear. The $3.5
trillion Build Back Better Act will not only expand Medicare, improve home
health care for the elderly and disabled, lower prescription drug prices,
combat climate change, and demand that the wealthy and large corporations pay
their fair share of taxes.
It will cut child poverty
in half by extending the $300 a month direct payments for working class parents
that expire in December.
It will allow more than a
million women to get back into the workforce by making sure that working
families pay no more than 7 percent of their incomes on child care and make
pre-school free for every 3 and 4 year old in America.
It will end the
international embarrassment of the United States of America being the only
major country on earth not to guarantee paid family and medical leave as a
human right. Under this legislation, we will no longer tell working moms that
they must go back to work a week or two after giving birth in order to put food
on the table and pay the rent.
It will address the labor
shortage in America by making community colleges tuition free so that young
people have the opportunity to acquire the skills they need for the good-paying
jobs that are going unfilled today.
It will create hundreds
of thousands of jobs by building the affordable housing we need so that
millions of Americans are no longer paying over 50 percent of their limited
incomes on housing and so 600,000 Americans are no longer sleeping out on the
street or in homeless shelters.
It is no great surprise
that not a single Republican in Congress supports this bill. After all, this is
the party that four years ago provided $2 trillion in tax breaks to primarily
benefit the wealthy and large corporations, and came within one vote of
throwing up to 32 million Americans off their health care.
So, in a tied Senate
which has 50 members each of the Democratic and Republican caucuses and a House
of Representatives which has a mere three-vote-majority for Democrats, the
question of whether we finally deliver consequential legislation to improve the
lives of working class families comes down to Democratic unity.
Will all Democrats
stand together to protect the interests of the elderly, the children, the sick
and the poor? Will all Democrats stand together to take on the
greed of the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance companies, the
fossil fuel industry, and wealthy campaign contributors?
I certainly hope so.
As
Chairman of the Budget Committee, Bernie is working hard in the Senate to pass
a bold, progressive agenda that puts working people first. If the budget that
Bernie is fighting for passes, it would be the most significant piece of
legislation since the New Deal. Let's make it happen.
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